The present invention relates to physiological monitoring of patients and, in particular, to physiological signal acquisition apparatus which provides real time and/or simultaneous transmission and display of the acquired signals via a hand held electronic machine/display.
Shifts in patient care, practices are changing the nature of monitoring. Increasingly, hospitals are attempting to lower costs by moving high-acuity patients as quickly as possible from intensive care units (ICU) to intermediate care and general ward areas.
This trend has dramatically reduced the need for the high end stationary, multi-parameter monitoring systems typically employed in the ICU. This has intensified demand for a more flexible, and therefore less expensive, systems that can easily be integrated into lower-acuity areas and configured to individual patient needs.
This is particularly the case in heart monitoring where the ECG is the well known form of monitoring.
Clinicians require rapid, sophisticated monitoring capability without compromising diagnostic quality and at low cost. Therefore it would be advantageous to provide a physiological signal monitor which is capable of providing real time acquisition and display of acquired signals via a portable, hand held electronic machine/display.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a physiological signal acquisition and display apparatus which substantially overcomes or ameliorates the above mentioned disadvantages. At the very least, the object of the invention is to provide an alternative to known physiological signal acquisition and display apparatus.
According to one aspect of the present invention there is disclosed a portable and multipurpose medical device for biological signals acquisition, display and biological data storage, said device comprising:
a preprogrammed cartridge comprising:
a housing;
a connector partially disposed within the housing;
a read only memory (ROM) for storage of the program which has been preprogrammed;
a random access memory (RAM) for storage of acquired data;
a ROMxe2x80x94RAM parallel interface; and
a portable device comprising:
a second housing;
a slot connector being provided for insertion of the pre-programmed cartridge;
a display screen being provided on the second housing for displaying the acquired data;
a joy pad and control buttons disposed within the second housing to control data acquisition options, horizontal and vertical scales of the display, and other application specific functions of the medical device; and
a biological signals acquisition module comprising:
a third housing;
a plurality of biological sensors;
an analog circuit to amplify and pre-condition biological signals from the plurality of the biological sensors;
input/output interface to connect said third housing to said second housing;
a digital circuit for digitizing the biological signal and to send the biological data through the connector regarding the biological data means for storing the collected biological data in the RAM of the first housing.
According to another aspect of the present invention there is disclosed a portable and multipurpose medical device for biological signals acquisition, display and biological data storage, said device comprising:
a preprogrammed and a biological signals acquisition module comprising:
a housing;
a connector partially disposed within the housing;
a read only memory (ROM) for storage of the program which has been preprogrammed;
a random access memory (RAM) for storage of acquired data;
a ROM-RAM parallel interface;
a plurality of biological sensors;
an electrically isolated analog circuit to amplify and pre-condition biological signals from the plurality of the biological sensors;
a digital circuit for digitizing the biological signal and to send the biological data through the connector regarding the biological data means for storing the collected biological data in the RAM; and
a portable device comprising:
a second housing;
a slot connector being provided for insertion of the pre-programmed module;
a display screen being provided on the second housing for displaying the acquired data;
a joy pad and control buttons disposed within the second housing to control data acquisition options, horizontal and vertical scales of the display, and other application specific functions of the medical device.
Preferably, the display device is a hand-held computer display device, for example, a xe2x80x9cNINTENDO GAMEBOYxe2x80x9d (a registered trademark of Nintendo Co. Ltd., of Kyoto, Japan, for one particularly well-known type of hand-held computer display device) or similar apparatus.
Preferably, the physiological signal acquisition monitoring and display apparatus is used to simultaneously acquire and physiological signals from a plurality of sensors measuring at least one of the group including multilead ECG, FECG, EEG, EMG, oximetry, blood pressure whether detected by invasive or non-invasive means, respiration, temperature, phonocardiogram, tokolytic, blood glucose, pCO2, pO2 and pacemaker pulses, and condition the signals and transmit data representing the signals in real time to an input/output port of the display device.
Preferably, the circuit means includes an isolated section, a non-isolated section with an isolation barrier therebetween, the isolated section being isolated from the input/output port of the display device. The isolated section receives the signals from the sensors and amplifies and preconditions the signals into data specific to the signal type prior to transmitting the data through the isolation barrier.
Preferably, the non-isolated section receives the data transmitted through the isolation barrier and prepares the data for transmission to input/output port of the display device via an input/output interface in the first housing and a cable means to the input/output port of the display device which is a second housing of the apparatus.
Preferably, the second housing is the Nintendo Game Boy(copyright) apparatus which comprises a microprocessor module, a display module, control means for using internal data and program memory or providing connection to an external data and/or program memory, single or multiple input/output ports, display control and control devices.
Preferably, a Nintendo(copyright) Game Boy(copyright) video game system is used as the display and control platform for various types of physiological data acquisition devices.
When a new acquisition device is required it simply requires design of the acquisition hardware and associated application software to make a new product. To enable this the application software for each device type is written and stored in game module (CART) ROM.
The final product consists of the acquisition hardware (Acquisition Unit), associated application software embedded in a game CART and the Game Boy(copyright) itself.
The Game Boy(copyright) combines a display/control system with an I/O interface to create a pocket size, low cost, diagnostic monitor.